[ From: 'Oh! India Oh! Pakistan' by Baljit Malik, July 2001 (published by Baljit Malik, New Delhi)]
Dear India and Pakistan
We are writing to you from No-man's land. From terrain torn by partitioned hearts and poisoned minds.
We are writing to you two nations, both of whom we regard as states that have failed their people, their enviornment and ecology. Two states that have also failed their religions, that too in the name of Jehad and Rama Rajya!
India and Pakistan, nations spattered with blood, broken skeletons, compromised constitutions and wounded freedom. From our No-Man's land, we are clear that we shall not allow ourselves to belong to you.
We shall also not reveal our well atlased location, our positional deployment or tactical command for liberation from your illegitimate apparatus of misgovernence.
From one of our strategic observation posts we can see your potential pristineness as far as Nanga Parbat just as we must shield our pupils against the dusty and polluted plains of Tarain and Panipat. And, we can see Waterloo written all over your Nishaan-e-Pollutions and Padma Bhootushans. For the two between you have fattened your respective moneyed 'elites' into pampered mafias self-jailed in their clubs, golf courses, messes, 5-star brothtels and regimental institutes.
It is no use throwing statistics at your two, for your decadence and corruption are only to obvious in your over-fed, overclothed, over-housed and miseducated upper and middle-classes. Obese, aggressive, uncouth and mannerless, these classes and castes have vandalised the economy and have spread out an an extravagant net of self-serving institutions in the name of progress and development.
In our No-Man's land of conscience, of aspiration, of native intelligence, there is no place for those who would mix their supper and wine with murder and blood. There is no place for those who would engage in deceit and diplomacy in the name of peace and development.
Our trumpet-call to you two nations is to disram and disband your apparatus of oppression. The very apparatus you use against each other and against your own people. The apparatus of mind and frame that destroys the ecology of nature, soul and matter. The apparatus of guns and bombs, of foul, language, command and domestic violence. The apparatus of industry that manufactures poisons only to market and brand them into brain and womb, and finally into our own memorials and tombs.
India and Pakistan, let us help you to realise your moment of truth in Kashmir. But for this to happen you must lay down and reverse your arms in the valley and mountaintops of doom you have wrought on our people.
Yes, reverse arms, and then let your generals pick up shovel, broom and their prayer-book. Let them then repair the damage they have done by commands issued from your shrapnelled brain.
We urge you to chime the bells of freedom on both sides of the Chenaab and Jhelum. We urge you to compromise your poisned nationalities and midwife a host of new nations of old bound by a subcontinental confederacy of self-governance. A self-governance from panchayat to mohalla that would act as a new frontier against violence, oppression, militarism and the false-god of liberalised industrialism.
So, Vajpayee loosen that dhoti, Musharraf dangle those medals..then talk of new frontiers, of peace, freedom and development.
Baljit Malik
Kasauli (India)
June 27, 2001.
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